


Solace, Not Revenge

by lilydaydreams



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Dialogue, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s06e18 Entropy, F/M, Heartbreak, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21929611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilydaydreams/pseuds/lilydaydreams
Summary: Spike and Anya find comfort in each other after their respective heartbreaks, finding their situations to be more similar than they might appear. Set during Season 6 Ep 18 "Entropy" with some canon and some imagined dialogue.
Relationships: Anya Jenkins & Spike, Anya Jenkins/Spike
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Solace, Not Revenge

**Author's Note:**

> Edited and expanded version of a story originally published on ff.net. Contains some canon dialogue and some of my own imagined/headcanon dialogue. Rated T for occasional profanity and mention of sexual content, none shown.

"Got something that'll dull the ache a bit?"

Anya smiled and walked around to the other side of the counter. "Actually, yes. Um, Giles left a couple of supplies here, and I think this might help." She rummaged through a drawer under the cash register. "Eases the hurt, makes the sun shine a little brighter, even makes boring people more interesting." Spike's brow furrowed and he looked at her with intense skepticism. "Ah. Here," she said, pulling out a large, mostly full bottle of whiskey and placing it on the counter.

Spike smiled wryly. "Hey, not quite what I was looking for, but it'll do."

Anya slid a shot glass across the counter to him. "So, what's going on with you? I know why I'm devastated and heartbroken, but what's your situation?" She felt a surprising tinge of genuine curiosity. How odd.

"A girl," Spike answered brusquely, not meeting her eyes.

"Ah. So forthcoming with the details." She shrugged and brightened up a bit. "Let's talk about me, then!"

Spike poured himself a shot and threw his head back, downing it in one go. "Right, right. I heard all about what happened between the two of you. Bloody awful."

"Isn't it? God, the hurt I'd inflict if I had the chance. And to hear him talk about it, it's all my fault." Spike nodded in agreement with her. "I mean, it wasn't even my idea to get married! He's the one who proposed and the one who backed out of it."

Spike took another shot as quickly and desperately as he’d consumed the first. "This is a bit too familiar for comfort," he said grimly.

"Did you get left at the altar lately too and I just missed the memo?"

"You know what I mean," Spike said, rolling his eyes. "The girl in question, the one who's making me drink, she fucked with my head more than I care to admit."

"This girl...what went on with her?" She knew she was on a mission here, to get him to wish horrible things on Xander and get it over with, but there was something so comforting about shared misery. Like she wasn’t all alone in the world.

"You know. Boy meets girl. Boy tries to kill girl a number of times then falls in love with her," he said, slurring his words a little. "Girl has wild, meaningless sex with him then suddenly ends it, mercilessly breaking his not-beating heart in the process. The usual."

Anya paused, not knowing quite how to respond to that, and poured them both another shot. She handed his to him. "Here. You need more whiskey."

“I tried to get through to her. I really did,” Spike said. “I told her how much I loved her, I told her that what we had was real.” He looked at Anya, his expression pleading, as if he could make her understand.

She just nodded, affirming his words, and his expression turned stony. “So then, this girl says, ‘Real for you.’” Spike spat out bitterly.

Anya told herself she needed to focus on the objective here. Get Spike to wish ill on Xander and inflict unspeakable pain. That’s all that mattered. "Right. But getting back to Xander..."

"Xander," Spike said with utter disgust and a wave of his hand. "Let's not waste any more breath on that wanker."

"But he made a fool of me. And nobody seems to care enough to do anything!"

"I care," said Spike. "What he done to you? I've never stooped that low, and I'm an evil, soulless thing...according to some people." He frowned, thinking that Buffy would excuse anything somebody did as long as that somebody was human.

"But shouldn't he pay? Don't you wish he had to pay in some horrible way?"

"Absolutely." Spike got up from his seat at the counter, bottle in hand, and walked over to the table, gesturing vaguely to the chip in his head. "Take him on myself, if it wasn't for my little handicap."

"Right. So...hypothetically, what do you wish you could do to him?"

"You name it, pet. You're the wronged party. Something...uh...gruesome, how bout?" He suggested, raising his shot glass to that.

Anya forced a smile, realizing he wasn't about to make a wish anytime soon. Spike put his head down on the table in frustration and sighed. "Do you ever wish the pain would go away, just for a few minutes?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean." Some things, even whiskey couldn't fix.

They sat in silence for a moment, till he spoke. "Look at us. The mighty Anyanka and William the Bloody, reduced to this over some fucking humans. Unbelievable."

"I should've remembered that there was a reason I didn't put up with guys for a thousand years," Anya said vehemently. "And then," she continued, her tone softening, "Xander came along and I forgot all about it...every value and principle I'd invested myself in, gone."

Spike laughed. "No offense, love, but you've got bloody awful taste in men. That troll creature, and then Xander...I'm not sure which is worse."

"Hey!" she objected, although he had a point. "To be fair, he wasn't a troll while we were going out."

"Right, right." He smiled. "You did that to him." There was a note of appreciation in his voice, a type of vague admiration of her work she’d never gotten from any of the Scoobies.

"And it's not like you have amazing taste in women, either. I mean, at least from what I've heard, Drusilla was batshit crazy, and Harmony was pretty damn awful in high school when she had a soul. You're one to talk."

He looked down at the floor. "The girl, who broke my heart..." he trailed off. "She's different. She's good."

"I know you're talking about Buffy, you know," Anya informed him bluntly.

Spike raised his eyebrows, feigning shock. "Well. What makes you think that?"

"Oh, cut the bullshit. You had a sex robot modeled after her, Spike."

"That's...technically true, I suppose."

"You have no idea how much I've had to filter myself so I didn't comment on all the sexual tension between the two of you. I mean, it was obvious there was something going on."

"Okay, fine, yeah. I'm talking about Buffy," he conceded.

"Look, Buffy's my friend," Anya said. She paused, looking up and thinking about it for a second. "Is she? I'm actually not sure. Whatever, she's something, and she saves the world a lot and I won't deny she has some okay qualities. But c'mon, she has such a superiority complex and this sanctimonious attitude about humanity and honestly, I think it's why she doesn't treat either of us better."

“You’d think she’d at least give us a bit of credit for trying, you know? Trying to abide by their ridiculous human laws and morals,” Spike said.

“The thing about it is, none of this was my idea. I didn’t ask to be human,” Anya pointed out.

“Right!” Spike agreed. “And I didn’t ask for this bloody chip in my head.” He pointed to his skull as if to underscore his point.

“To tell you the truth,” Anya said, as if she was accustomed to doing anything other than telling the truth. “All I wanted was to use him and lose him. Hadn’t had a good tumble in a thousand years.”

Spike let out a low chuckle at that. “Me too. The using part. I just wanted to know what I was missing, move on.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “Then he was all bumpy...in the right places.” She thought about Xander’s abs and how she used to watch him work. “And nice to me.” It had been so long since anybody had been nice to her. Cared about her as more than a means to an end. Being a vengeance demon wasn’t exactly a line of work that led to many friends, with Halfrek as the only real exception.

“She was so raw. Never felt anything like it,” Spike said, his eyes soft and wistful.

Anya snapped herself out of it. She was here for vengeance, damn it, or at the very least some good shit talking. “Next thing you know, I’m changing to please him. I care if he cares!” Saying it out loud highlighted the sheer absurdity.

“Right.”

“And I’m off my guard. Happy. Singing in the shower, doing my sexy dance.” All those memories, sweet at the time, were tinged with anger and grief now. 

“Exactly,” Spike agreed. He paused for a moment then clarified. “I have no dance.”

They sat in silence for a few moments until Anya decided they needed even more alcohol. “I have to admit there are things I don’t miss about him. He’s really not terribly intelligent, and he’s rather needy in bed, and he had a way of making me feel insecure about the strangest little things.”

Spike nodded. “Buffy was like that too. Wouldn’t even consider me a friend, knowing I’d die for her. Knowing I’d do anything to protect her and the people she cared about. She could screw me, but she couldn’t see me as a friend.” He poured yet another shot, the bottle’s store’s dwindling.

“Right? Sometimes I wondered if Xander would even like me if I didn’t have so much sex with him,” Anya pondered, getting up for a moment to stretch her legs. Spike grunted at that and shrugged.

She plopped herself back down, this time sitting atop the table. “Screw ‘em!” she declared.

“To the rafters!” Spike seconded. Anya wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but she decided to ignore it.

“I did everything for that man. Was it ever enough?” Anya questioned. She was beginning to feel quite drunk, and from Spike’s slurred speech, she could tell it was getting to him too.

“Never! I was always goin’ above and beyond. I saved the Scoobies how many times, and I can’t stand the lot of you.”

“Me either! I hate us!” She idly wondered how long it had been since she’d started including herself in ‘us.’ “Everybody’s so nice, and nobody says what’s on their mind.”

“You do!” Spike immediately countered. “That’s why you’re the only one of them I wouldn’t bite if I had the chance.” She was inclined to believe him, if only for the simple reason that she wanted one person to like her for who she was right now.

Anya let out a little girlish giggle and scrunched up her nose. She felt herself smiling, really smiling, for the first time since the wedding debacle. “Oh. Really?”

“Absolutely!” Spike confirmed. “I have nothing but respect for a woman who’s forthright. Drusilla was always straightforward. Didn’t have a single buggering clue about what was going on in front of her, but she was always straight about it. That was a virtue.”

She smiled and laughed at that, then bit her lower lip in thought. “Xander didn’t think so. He thought I was  _ rude. _ ” She scoffed at the memory of all the times Xander had told her off for being frank about what she was thinking in front of his friends.

“That’s because he’s one of them,” Spike said, as if it was obvious. “Uptight. Repressed.”

“You think?”

“Please. It’s no wonder they couldn’t deal with the likes of you and me, love. We should’ve been dead hundreds of years ago. And we’re the only ones who are really alive.” 

It was poetic, certainly, and Anya wanted so, so badly to believe it. “Hmm.” She knew it her heart that wasn’t it, but she smiled softly at him anyway, not sure whether the warmth rising in her chest was whiskey or affection.

“You know, you and me...we have a lot in common,” Spike continued. She slid off the table and mused over that. “We went against every fiber of who we truly are,” he elaborated. “For what, _love_? Heartbreak, more like.”

“Love,” Anya said, not able to inject as much disdain into the word as she would’ve liked. “Not sure why I let myself get roped back into that again.”

“It’s heartbreak. Only heartbreak,” Spike said grimly. “No such thing as love.”

* * *

Somehow Anya ended up back flat against the table, no doubt in either of their minds in what they were about to do. She’d meant it when she told him it felt good to be with someone who understood. As his lips crashed onto hers, she thought maybe the darkness would go away for a little while, but deep down, she knew it would all come rushing back sooner or later. Either way, it was good to have a friend.


End file.
